Hanazono Megumi
Hanazono Megumi is Amano's beautiful former classmate. She was considered his high school's madonna and it seems that Amano still loves her. In the manga, Amano meets her for the first time after a long time while she and Mimura were on their way to buy their engagement rings. Thanks to her rich fiancé, the young woman will be able to transfer her sick mother to a hospital in Tokyo in order to have a surgery. By a conversation with Amano at the hospital, it seems like Hanazono is only going to marry Mimura because of his money. Amano and Hanazono meet again in the hospital while the journalist was visiting her mother there. Hanazono works in a news agency, but she says her future husband and his parents wants her to quit her job, even though she really enjoys it. She's disappointed. However, after Amano tells her he will soon get rich, she says she will tell Mimura that she still wants to keep her job; if he doesn't agree with it, she will then rethink about marrying him. So it seems like she is more willing to marry Amano than Mimura, but only because of his money and because she wouldn't have to stop working. Still at the hospital, Hanazono tells Amano she's collecting data on the fire in Honmachi, Amano's apartment (though she doesn't know he used to live there). She informs him it was arson. Unfortunately there aren't many clues so it will be impossible to catch the perpetrator. The next day, Amano calls Hanazono to impress her about the job he got at the Ghost Tower. Because Amano mentions the Ghost Tower and that a murder almost happened there some days ago, Hanazono goes to the tower that night to investigate it herself. Finding trails in the tower would make her able to break through in this male-oriented society. Death After climbing the clock tower, the young journalist finds someone up there and asks if he is the caretaker. However, after seeing that the strange man had a mask and some rope near him, she quickly tries to get away, only to get cut on the hand by him and then stabbed. Hanazono is dragged to the face of the clock. In the next morning, the young woman is found dead and naked at the hand of the clock. At her feet there was a writing possibly made by the murderer. It is actually a circle that forms a kanji: it is the kanji for 'ri" as in "Rika" that can also be read as "Rei". This make the inspector and his assistant think that Rika might still be alive. However, the word "Marube" also means circle so they understand the circle as a warning to the procecutor Marube who just bought the tower; they read it as a warning to go away. Everyone is apprehensive and scaried that Hanazono might have been raped because of the blood between her legs. Fortunately, the autopsy verified that there was no sexual violence involved. Amano himself gives this information to Hanazono's sick mother and says he will be responsible to pay her hospital fees, but only because he had a debt with Hanazono, which was not true. Mimura wouldn't continue paying the hospital fees because, as he said, he had no obligations with a stranger now. Family Her mother's heart got bad two years before the recent events and her father died in an air raid. It seems her mother got sick from all the hard work she had to do after her husband's death. Now it was Hanazono's time to look after her mother. The manga doesn't mention Hanazono having any siblings. Category:Characters